The ACCESS2GOOD Project

The ACCESS to GOOD Project is an open, collaborative, ongoing reporting process, aiming to identify observable levers of action for adding value, momentum, and scope to investments in climate action and resilient human development.

ACCESS is a framework for analyzing the level of progress on comprehensive climate action. The ACCESS standard aims to measure six qualifications of public policy, investment prioritization and business action:

GOOD is a framework for analyzing the generative tendencies, including community-building reinforcements and local value added of day to day economic activity, at the human scale. This analysis operates on the premise that all economic behavior has at its roots a basic and specific demand for generative optimizing capabilities operating organically through routine human behavior.

We can improve conditions; we make an effort to do so, through collaboration of many kinds, and we assess the value of a transaction based on the degree to which it meets our aim of doing just a bit better. In other words, what we call economic behavior is necessarily rooted in generative organic optimization demand.

Looking at human-scale economic activity through the GOOD economics lens, specific kinds of generative reinforcements can be observed, measured, and tracked for their clear value added.

Biological: First of all are the life-sustaining compounds without which human life is not possible: clean air, clean water, and food-borne nutrients.

Structural: Next are those structural comforts of the built environment, without which human beings are less able to achieve long life expectancy and educational and professional excellence: shelter, plumbing and heat and electricity.

Political: The hope, then, would be that with these come political liberties: freedom of thought, freedom of assembly, freedom of worship, freedom of the press, freedom from all forms of discrimination, and an enforceable guarantee of voting rights and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, in short: to put the preceding good reinforcement into practice in the world.

Community: Individuals and families tend to be, as economic actors, expressions of Generative Organic Optimization Demand, specifically over and above the four preceding categories of primordial GOOD economic requirements: biological, structural, intellectual, political. Individuals and families are best able to participate in the economic, social and political constellation of influences, when there is community infrastructure allowing for substantive, character-driven interaction at the human scale.

Initiatives supported by Geoversiv under the ACCESS to GOOD Project

Resilience Intel is the first comprehensive climate-smart finance aggregator, working through a coalition of political and practitioner partners to identify, track, grade and upgrade the climate intelligence of money across the whole economy. It emerges from the Acceleration Dialogues and aims to simplify the mainstreaming of climate priorities in financial decision-making by making visible the vast opportunity for rapid scaling up of micro-scale climate-smart investments, at all levels.

The platform, still in development, will produce the following outcomes:

a ratings system that can apply to any kind of spending (bonds, budgets, construction, household water bills, etc.);

a steadily expanding aggregate of the climate-positive cash in circulation (the investable opportunity);

a way for decision-makers to “see” that landscape more clearly and in ways that are more readily actionable;

roadmaps for upgrading the climate intelligence of money/finance/expenditures that are on the lower end of the ratings system;

as a result — a top-line indicator for financial decision-makers to aid in their gauging the long-term resilience value of a given stock / institution / instrument;

an accelerated shift of finance at all levels away from climate harm toward climate good.

Peace Synapse

The Peace Synapse graph aims to identify, expand, and operationalize climate, peace and security connections in the real world.

This stunning image is actually a map of knowledge connections, between people, institutions, climate change impacts, and related response scenarios. It is a global knowledge graph (GKG) of climate, peace and security connections, running from January 2009 through 2016. Because it allows us to examine and to think through our shared opportunities for leveraging knowledge and responsive practical capability to deal with climate, peace and security connections, we gave it the working title Peace Synapse.

Analytical Tools

To apply the ACCESS to GOOD standards to specific cases, so macro-scale reporting informs and optimizes action at the micro-scale, and vice-versa, we are developing a number of analytical tools designed to provide insight about how best to leverage existing pressures to drive change more affordably.

Two crucial indicators that can be applied to individual and group cases are:

The Business-Model Innovation Index (B-MIX)

The Carbon Pricing Value Chain (CPVC)

Business model innovation is crucial for adapting to the new political, technological, cultural, and economic environment. Energy companies, policy-makers, institutional investors, portfolio managers, insurers, finance ministers, even military strategic planners, will all need to have an enhanced understanding of the relationship between reducing emissions, policies that drive emissions reduction, business value, and long-term viability of a given operation. Nation states will be more or less secure, depending on these dynamics.

By examining the nature of economic, financial and administrative pressures emerging from well-designed carbon pricing policies, in connection with carbon asset risk and related cost inefficiencies, we can develop a landscape of efficiency valuations that will provide insight into the Carbon Pricing Value Chain, and how it relates to specific nations, markets, sectors, and businesses. Detailed participatory CPVC analysis will then allow us to map out the efficiencies that show a clear route to best-case low-carbon business models, industry mixes, and long-term economic planning.

We can use the ACCESS standard and evaluation of GOOD reinforcements, in combination with B-MIX and CPVC analysis, to identify, talk about, and chart the future trajectory of value considerations, in specific business, local economic, and national cases.

Additional Measurement Tools

To ensure we are not duplicating the excellent work of others, or distorting already well-tested assessments of active and evolving market value, we will look to include cross-references from Carbon Delta, CDP, the Social Progress Index, the Human Development Index, and analyses of where activity in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals adds value locally.

Roots

The organizational home for the ACCESS to GOOD Project is the Geoversiv Foundation. We will build in direct contributions from partners working on carbon delta analysis, business model impacts, innovation standards, and key areas of scientific observation and public policy. Weaving a participatory matrix for economic testimony at the human scale will enhance policy transparency, and give us a new way of seeing value.

Contributions from partners around the world will allow for citizen-driven ground-truthing of global policy initiatives, major scientific reporting, and industry-specific transition analysis. The ACCESS to GOOD Report—an annual report-back from an always-ongoing, everywhere active multilevel global consultation process—is aimed at ensuring community-level participation in a just, rapid, and far-reaching transition away from climate-forcing fuels, and so will empower local networks of volunteers, leaders, organizations, observers, and researchers, to bring their insight to bear on that transition.

The #access2good project has its roots in analysis already being done throughout the Geoversiv network. Go to access2good.earth any time for the full archive of related reporting. By building in local testimony as a key value added, the ACCESS to GOOD Report will ensure a higher-resolution view of economic impacts and efficiencies as lived at the human scale.